The Helsinki Process

Susan George

August 2006

The Helsinki Process
A Preliminary Contribution
Susan George
TNI Website, July 2004

Additional comments, Paris, 2 January 2005

Dear Friends and Colleagues in the Helsinki Process,

First let me wish you all a very Happy New Year personally and a far better year for the world in 2005. Almost anything would be better than 2004 and I hope our Report will contribute to progress.

Here I would like to comment briefly as possible on some of the material we've received so far, while awaiting the first draft of the Report itself, announced for mid-January, and the pleasure of seeing many of you again in New Delhi.

The terrible, continuing tragedy in Asia and the outpouring of support from
ordinary people worldwide [even more than from governments] got me thinking about our Report: Using as a basis the latest UN estimate of the number of probable victims [150.000], after briefly recalling the drama, we might begin our own Report something like this:

How many are 150.000 deaths? To what can one possibly compare this terrifying number? It is equal to the number of children under five who die every five days, from preventable causes, 99 percent of them in the developing countries. 150.000 is the same as the number of victims of small arms, or of women who die in childbirth, every one-hundred days. 150.000 people die every 18 days from malaria and TB for lack of proper care. [AIDS... ] And were we to assume that people trafficked, mostly women and children, might be better off dead, then the US Justice Department estimates that 150.000 people fall victim to such slavery every 70 days.

I confess I've not yet read carefully the report from Track 1 but it seems very practical and recommendation-oriented which is good. On the basis, however, of the Secretariat Report on our meeting in Dar and on the Reports of Tracks 2 and 3, I would like to make comments on three points, hoping not to try your patience.

First, I am concerned that the realisation of the Millennium Development Goals is tending to blot out any other objective. It's not that the MDGs aren't important-of course they are-but I've had several conversations with African, Latin American and Asian colleagues in different forums over the past several months and the impression I get is that the MDGs are definitely not a good tool for mobilisation, or at the very least should not be the primary one. Naturally, these people are the sorts I tend to meet-let's say Porto Alegre, as opposed to Davos or middle-of-the-road government or UN types. Their comments are in my view none the less valuable. Here is my paraphrase of these comments:

The MDGs are the minimum of the minimum, totally inadequate. Young people especially are fed up with exercises like these, once more imposed on us by the North. How would you like it if you were told that half of you would live and half die by 2015? Human rights are never mentioned. [NB, This isn't quite true but that seems to be the perception]. The MDGs never question the basic rules of the trading system or the International Financial Institutions or the market and there's nothing new about them-they just restate an agenda already established in the 1970s. But now the MDGs have become the answer to everything. They embody the charity, as opposed to justice, approach. Are we supposed to cheer just because nothing better is currently available?

I would add that focusing on the MDGs could also conveniently allow us to avoid answering the first question our Report is supposed to tackle: What is wrong with the world and why? If one takes the MDGs as a starting point, then one needn't worry about root causes because poverty, illness, hunger etc. are just there. We don't need prior knowledge or a hypothesis before deal with them. This isn't very scientific. Since "policy coherence" seems to come up a lot in the literature [I'll say a word at the end about precooked phrases and deadening jargon] let me also point out that present policies, like, say, more trade liberalisation or structural adjustment cannot lead to achieving the MDGs.

Second, even if we ultimately decide that we really do have to go for the MDGs in our Report, the method and resources brought to bear for this purpose in the Track 2 Report seem to me utterly timid and inadequate. Unless I missed it, international taxation [except on travellers] is never mentioned. Last September, our conservative President Chirac, along with Lula, Zapatero of Spain and Lagos of Chile; took a proposal to the UN which is far more radical than anything proposed by Track 2. It was immediately endorsed by 110 heads of government. Chirac, who had named a Commission to come up with new ideas, wrote to the ATTAC colleague who helped draw up the proposal, "you have demonstrated to us that [these] innovative mechanisms for development financing are technically realistic and economically rational... our Report is already a central reference in this debate." Can Helsinki remain so far behind?

Track 2 says that most resources will have to come from inflows of foreign capital, but that is only true if financial flows remain as they are; about $200 billion a year in favour of the North. I see our task partly as helping to free local resources, particularly through much broader debt cancellation, not just for the 48 poorest. Also, the Track 2 document seems to me just plain wrong on questions of foreign investment. According to the latest UN World Investment Report, investment in the South has gone overwhelmingly to services and extractive industries. Service jobs generally go to the more highly educated, not the poor, and extractive industries often leave lots of damage in their wake. Furthermore, cross-border mergers and acquisitions are by far the preferred mode of entry [in some years 80 or 85 percent] and often result in job losses; present trade rules are wiping out SMEs all over the South where infant industries cannot compete. Nor does Track 2 provide any analysis of what has worked in the past: in the case of the now-developed, Western countries, lots of protectionism and stringent capital controls; in cases like Korea or Taiwan, the same, plus targeted subsidies and government investment in chosen industries. All these are now outlawed. I have various other critical remarks I'll spare you.

Third, two huge political problems are sitting there like the 800 pound gorilla in the middle of the room no one wants to talk about. The first is maybe even a 1000 pound gorilla-it's the re-election of George Bush. What this sad event means is that we cannot count on the United States to join in any useful initiative, social, environmental, political, what-have-you. Therefore, we must try to concentrate on coalitions of the like-minded which proceed on their own. In this connection, I would like to remind Track 2 that the OECD, the DAC, the IFIs et alia, in which it seems to set great store, are all hugely beholden to the US. We have to go for more original, experimental groupings and this is one of the more exciting possibilities of the Helsinki Process, explicitly placed before us by Ministers Tuomioja and Kikwete. Naturally, even I am not tactless and undiplomatic enough to suggest we say outright in our Report that nothing is to be expected of the United States so we should encourage like-minded, foresighted, intelligent people and governments to make alliances and get on with it, but this letter is for you and you get my drift.

Part of this innovative coalition building must, in my view, be based on a renewed concept of the State, which is pretty much missing from the Report, at least so far. Jean-François seems to have given up on the State, at least that's what I understood at the last meeting. I haven't. But I recognise that the "Westphalian" system is in deep crisis, mainly because economic forces are global, they wreak huge havoc and the role of the State, by default, has become that of the one who has to pick up the pieces and try to sort out all the human and material wreckage wrought by markets and economic globalisation. So the State has two choices. It can take the line of least resistance, which is what nearly all have done so far. It says "OK, the market is king, all we can do is our best to help the victims it's throwing out and the environment it's destroying, but our best isn't going to be very good, partly because we have no power to tax those same market players". Or the State can say "Yes, we're confronted with a new situation, but it is possible to devise policies that are more favourable to human beings and to the earth. But none of us can do it alone. We have to reach out and build alliances with other States that share this analysis". There are plenty of obvious subjects to tackle first, which would also be the least controversial-international health problems and epidemics, mass migrations, criminal financial transactions and money-laundering [even Bush might go along on that one]; ecological disasters and so on. I personally hope to see the Helsinki process take this direction.

Finally, a word on style. UN-ese has become so ingrained in so many of us that we may come to believe that ordinary mortals express themselves in the same ways. Actually they don't talk about multi-stakeholder dialogues, policy coherence or inter-sectoral linkages. Neither should we, at least not if we want to be read. That is why I still like one of the conclusions we came to in Dar-the world must be made safe, just, and viable.

Thank you for your patience. See you soon, and again Happy New Year,
Susan George